almost like heaven
by Nonny21
Summary: When four women go missing Tate and his team are called to the rescue. These damsels in distress are more than what they seem and will lead the solders on a journey they will never forget!
1. Chapter 1

The darkness was every where, like a thick wet blanket suffocating him. There was no escape, no reprieve, no pin points of moonlight filtering down through the leaves of the trees. Trees, he knew he was in a forest but he didn't know how. Tate ran, keeping as much as possible, in a straight line. the woods would end eventually, nothing lasts forever. Except for him and his kind.

He was aware that he was not alone, some where in the black expanse was the girl. She haunted him even in his waking hours... Pip. She dove in and out of the trees, avoiding him and _the others_. If she knew he was there she made no attempt to reach him as he tried to catch her. He could hear the rapid beat of her heart, and smell her sweet fear. Tate wanted to call to her, but that would draw the attention of _the others_.

Tate jerked awake with a start. He was home, in the navy lodgings that had been provided for he and his team. The clock by his bed glowed as green as Tate's eyes in the night. Four o'clock in the morning. It was just as well that he get up now, he needed to go over the maps again before his next shift in the search party.

The maps and charts were spread over his kitchen table, taunting him with information he couldn't find. Four women had been taken right from this very base. If they had been just any women Tate and his team would not bother...but they were his women. Hand picked to provide blood for him and his team when they could not go out and hunt.

He had only ever fed once from one of them, but the memory was burned into his mind forever. It had been a brutal few days of fighting and running, Tate didn't have the time or energy to go out and seduce a girl into his arms. The sun was harsh and the wind blew the leaves off the trees as he strode towards the house that the four women lived in.

she was sitting at the picnic table in the yard. several books covered the surface, their pages weighted down by rocks. Her short brown curls blew into her face and she squinted to see what was on the page she was reading. Tate made no effort to be quiet as he approached and seated himself across from her.

With a huff of frustration she slammed the book closed and threw it onto the table. "well that's just no help at all." she told the book. Tate chuckled, and she looked up as if startled to find him sitting there. "oh" she breathed a sigh of relief. "it's just you."

"just your friendly neighborhood vampire." he confirmed.

"better the devil I know than..." she let the sentence drop, furrowing her brows. "never mind, you came here for a reason." she held out her arm, wrist up. "feed?" Tate was blown away. "it's OK." she she gave his a sweet warm smile.

Tate took her arm into his hands, and gently pulled it to his lips. With a stroke of his tong she closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. "it doesn't hurt you know." he told her. She just nodded and moved her wrist back to his mouth, eager for his bite. When his teeth sank into that lovely, creamy, flesh and the sweet ambrosia of her blood poured into him Tate wondered if a man could die from pleasure.

Slicing his tong on a fang he closed the puncture wounds on her slim wrist and let her pull it back. She didn't wipe his saliva or their mingled blood off as some of the others had, simply picked her book back up and began to read again.

That had been the first and last time he had ever seen her, but it had been enough. Now the picture of that beautiful young woman was burned into his mind and she was haunting him. He vowed he'd find he and the bastards who had taken her and make every thing right, he though of how Cat would tease his for his supposed superman complex. Save the damsel in distress, earn a kiss.

There was a sudden pounding on his door. "Commander!" some one was shouting. "commander there has been a development!" wearing only his pajama bottoms he opened the door.

"what is it Sargent?"

"you have to come quickly!" the man was breathing hard and half bent over having just run from God knew where to get there.

"this had damned well better be important, it's five o'clock in the morning." Tate growled at the man.

"it is! You have to come, Commander Juan is waiting for you." Tate stepped aside to let the panting solder into his home.

"wait here, I'll get dressed."

the others were coming, with every second that passed they moved closer. Pip had run out of energy, and she was running out if time. She closed her eyes tight and reached for him.

_Tate, please._ She Felt the brush of his consciousness against hers, he felt her. _The forest, come to the forest! _His mind stirred again.

The connection was there, she could feel it... but he didn't know how to use it. Damn the man for being so thick. Men usually were, being purely physical beings. Tate was the one, she had felt it when he bit her, been so sure of it then. Now lost and alone... who could be sure of any thing?

_My men._ She heard, tho it sounded distant. His men? He wanted her to find his men? He was supposed to be the one finding her, not the other way around. Pip reached out with her scenes, searching, feeling. There, Just beyond The Others, were Tate's men. But how was she to get to them?

The Others felt her, they felt the energy she had used to find the solderers. Shit! "over here! She's over here!" they shouted and rushed in her direction. She was running again, dodging low branches and vaulting over fallen trees. "don't let her get away!" Pip reached out again, looking for the void, the beyond where she could hide.

It was there, in a cave forty feet ahead and to the left. She'd be safe there, evil can't enter the void in their physical form, the light will rip their soul from them. And they wouldn't take the chance of leaving their bodies behind for Tate's men to find. "she is headed for the void!" a panicked voice announced.

"don't let her get there!" they were to late. On her hands and knees she crawled into the cave entrance and heaved a sigh of relief. The shimmering portal that offered safety, protection, and unending life. There had once been a time when Pip resented all of this, her life or lack there of. Now she was thinking her maker for this gift/curse as she crawled into the Void.

Tate looked down at the body on the slab, she was still covered with the stupid plastic sheet. _Not Pip, please let it not be Pip!_ The coroner pulled back the covet to reveal a beautiful busty blond. _Thank god!_ "who is she?" he demanded.

"her name was Pelaliah, they called her Liah." Tate sniffed in, she didn't wreak of blood.

"how did she die?" he inquired.

"that's the thing." the pathologist was staring at the lifeless form, perplexed. "she is not dead...exactly."

"it's to early in the morning for me to deal with euphoniums." Tate growled. "you called me in here to view the lifeless body of a girl we have been searching for and tell me _'she's not exactly dead'_ and expect me to get it?" he was still growling when they looked at him some what bemused.

"it is true enough that she had no heart beat, but neither do you." the slight. Balding man, pointed out. "she shows no physical signs of being alive, no breathing or movement at all." Tate nodded, waiting for the man to make seance. "but when hooked to an EEG there are major signs of life. Namely her brain is alive and thinking."

"what prompted you to hook her to an EEG?" Tate demanded. The little man nodded towards the door where the ghostly form of Don was floating.

"your ghost told me to. I might have figured out for myself that there was something wrong if I had waited long enough."

"how?" Tate was still feeling annoyed and demanding.

"we don't know how long she was like this before she was found, but it took your last search team four hours to return here with her and I have been working on the initial outer examination for the autopsy for the last hour and she doesn't show any sign of Rigor mortise or decomposition." Tate took another deep breath in through his nose.

"there is no smell of death." he admitted. "what aren't you telling us old man?" Tate turned towards Don's ghost. The insubstantial old man straightened his form, locked his transparent eyes with Tate's dark blue gaze and spoke one word that reverberated through the room and the minds of every one standing there.

"Angels."


	2. Chapter 2

"you have got to be fucking kidding me." Tate looked back at the woman's body on the table and took a step away. The girl was beautiful, he'd admit that. Her blond hair almost formed a halo around her head, framing her beautiful, angelic, face.

"_Qué mujer tan hermosa!*" _Juanleaned closer to the _angel_.

"this is bull shit. I drank from one of them." Tate insisted.

"they are only part angel, corporeal beings. I'm not sure of Liah's parentage, but one of the girls...Pip. she is at least half, if not more, Angel." Don told him.

"what the hell Don? You hand selected these women to be fucking food. Now your telling me you knew the whole time they were fucking angels?"

"they volunteered." Don had the brains to look ashamed. "that's not important right now," he insisted shaking his ghostly head. "we have to find the rest of those girls!"

"no shit." Tate was ready to start snapping heads off.

"dude, watch your mouth." Juan nodded towards the girl. "she's an angel." Tate growled.

"she is not in there." Don told them.

"no? Where is she?" Juan looked truly interested.

"the void." Don looked up towards the ceiling. "the grate beyond." Tate followed his ghostly friends gaze but saw only the ceiling of the morgue.

"I thought angels went to heaven." Juan said, craning his neck to try and see whatever it was Don was seeing.

"the girls are only part angel, and thus can only enter the kingdom through portals in their physical form. Since her body is here she must have slipped into the void...I think it is also called Purgatory." Don said offhandedly still looking upward. He shook his head and looked back to Tate. "something bad is happening if these girls are leaving their physical behind, risking being stuck in purgatory..." he was shaking his head, sorrow showing on his wispy gray face.

"Commander?" a solder's head popped into the room. Tate turned to him, brows raised. "your chopper leaves in five." Tate nodded his understanding and the solder left.

"we have to find them Tate." Done insisted again.

"i intend to."

_***Juan said "what a beautiful woman"**_

"where was Liah found?" Tate demanded of the man standing closest to him.

" Three clicks north, sir." Tate took the offered map noting the red X, he studied it for a moment. "look here." he pointed to a symbol that would be only a few feet from where the girl's body had been. There was an r in a circle, meaning restricted. "what is here?"

"i believe it is a cave system, sir." Tate nodded to himself, thinking. "sir?"

"is it possible she was headed there?"

"trying to hide?" the solder pondered the idea as well. "how would she have know it was there?"

"i don't know, but it is worth a look. Juan, Cooper!" the other men came trotting over.

"got something Tate?"

"maybe, there is a cave about three clicks north of here, I want to check it out." the other men nodded and began barking orders.

The entrance of the cave was nothing more than a small hole in the rock. "well hell." Cooper looked down, dejected. "that's going to be one tight squeeze." Tate began stripping off his gear, handing Juan his guns and Kevlar vest. He kicked off his boots and pulled off his bulky cameo suit, stripping down to his boxer-briefs.

"i don't think that is safe." Juan told him. Tate gave a huff of laughter as he began shimmying his lower half through the hole.

"I'm a fucking vampire, what is going to happen?" Juan and Cooper looked at each other and shrugged. "that's what I thought. if I 'm not back by tomorrow use some damn c4 and blow the sucker open to get me out." his friends agreed as Tate's head disappeared.

The cave wasn't at all what Tate had been expecting. When sliding into the tiny entrance Tate had expected dripping walls with spears of stone hanging from the roof, bats taking wing to feed from millions of creepy crawly bugs.

The cavern was open and dry with a solid rock floor and a few scattered pebbles that he kicked at. "you OK Tate?" Juan called.

"fine." he shouted back. His voice echoed off the solid rock walls. "toss me a light." a flashlight was tossed down and Tate caught it with ease. The beam of light showed that this main cavern opened at the back "there is a tunnel here, I'm going to check it out."

"careful Tate." Juan warned. Tate scoffed as he headed to investigate. The air in the tunnel changed, it grew almost denser. If it were still necessary for him to breath Tate would have felt concerned at the pressure that was suddenly pushing against his chest. The beam of his light hit something a few feet ahead. Tate froze. It looked like a doorway, but it was translucent, shimmering blue, and moving.

"what the hell?" he stepped closer and it grew less transparent. he was sure if he reached out his hand he would go right through it. Another step and the damn thing moved again, like sheer fabric in the wind. The pale blue undulated and darkened, he could swear there was s figure standing just beyond the threshold. "hello?" he called out.

There was no reply, who ever was standing there didn't move. Tate took another tentative step towards the portal. He was almost sure that was what this was. It had to be a portal of some kind, but where would a portal in a cave in the middle of the wood lead?

The figure on the other side moved then, turning towards Tate. He didn't move, not sure if they could see him at all. "hello?" he heard a soft feminine voice say, but it wasn't out loud. "who's there?" the voice demanded, in his mind.

"my name is Tate Bradly, I'm with the United States military. I am on a rescue mission to find..." what to say? Tate had no idea who or what he was speaking to, how could he admit to trying to rescue kidnapped angels? "I'm looking for four women who disappeared in these parts. "Pip, Liah, Tavia, and Mary. Do you know them?"

"Pip?" the voice asked. "you are looking for Pip?"

"do you know her?"

"don't move!" the voice was firm, no longer the wispy sound bouncing in his head but a commanding force. The figure retreated into the blue beyond, leaving Tate standing there in wounder. Tate began to think perhaps he'd gone insane.

First there were the crazy dreams that had him chasing Pip through the wood and left him feeling more tired than he'd been when he went to bed. Now he was standing in a cave talking to a voice in his head and staring at something that couldn't possibly be before him... in nothing but his underwear.

There was movement then, the portal shifted and swayed more fiercely than it had before. The whirling blue deepened to a dark midnight nearly black. Tate didn't have time to register what was happening before a figure came hurtling head first out of the abyss, straight into his arms.


End file.
